Houston

Aside from a state historical marker out front, the League of United Latin American Citizens Council 60 clubhouse looks like any other vacant building in Houston – it’s decades old and has severe water damage.

The story of Houston is more than the history of a shipping channel, oil and gas, or the space program. It's also the story of the highways that link these industries with the people and resources that created growth. Houston highways also changed the layout of communities – relocating some neighborhoods and hemming in others.

For eight years, in southwest Houston, a brothel operated out of a shabby apartment complex. Locals who knew about it didn’t speak up, fearful of retribution from the gang-affiliated family that police say was running the operation.

Undocumented women and girls, some as young as 14, were beaten, drugged, and lured with promises of restaurant jobs that never materialized. The FBI taketown targeted the operations of the Southwest Cholos gang, though this operation only hints at how much of a problem human sex trafficking has become in Texas’ biggest city.

When Hurricane Harvey hit Houston in August, Tosha Atibu and her husband Atibu Ty Ty were asleep in their home with their children. A neighbor woke them up to tell them the water was rushing up the street.

"It was really scary situation. ... the water was coming in from the front yard, from the back yard, flooding everywhere. We had to act immediately," Tosha Atibu says.